Warlord level AI "strategy"?

[dowski]

I am in the middle of a Warlord level game, playing as the Indians. I have the Persians to my north, whom I lived at peace with until around 1760 or so. We both had similar size militaries (200 or so units), and Xerxes was "polite" toward me until one of his Ironclads attacked an Indian battleship.

After a few more naval skirmishes that turn, they began a ground invasion - *with one stack of over 120 infantry, riflemen, musketmen, etc*!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! There was no Cavalry, no Artillery, just these defensive type units.

I proceeded to take 2 of their cities on my turn, and they pulled those 120+ units back into their territory and have now poised them to retake one of their cities. They are able to move them fast in their own territory due to railroads.

My best defensive unit is Infantry, and I don't know how many I would need to stand up against 120+ units...

Anyone else see huge masses of AI troops attacking in this manner? I have seen some threads where people talked about huge amounts of defenders in cities, but what about these huge amounts of attackers?

-dowski

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Nevermind this...I now see another thread devoted to this topic...sorry for the dupe...

 

[Bamspeedy]

This is new with patch 1.21f. Now rifleman, and I believe infantry are flagged to be both defensive and offensive, instead of just defensive. Prior to the patch, almost every rifleman that was built was just left to fortify in a town. When you attacked a civ, you only had to worry about their first wave of attackers (cavalry), then just pluck away at the rifleman waiting in the cities. Now instead of just leaving all those rifleman sitting in those cities doing nothing, they can go on the offensive! And with railroads every single rifleman from all over their territory can converge on one spot instantly.

Facing a stack of over 100 units is probably the only time I would use a nuke .

 

[Sanaz]

There was another thread about this - it seems that the new patch considers infantry and mech infantry to be both offensive and defensive units. I had the same situation as you, and I responded by signing an MPP with our mutual neighbor and attacking the closest city (I knew that most of their military was in two stacks outside my city and the city was lightly defended because I had a spy planted) - they then retreated to win back their city, and I destroyed them during retreat in open land in my territory because their border had receded across a mountain range with the capture so it was three turns for them to get away.

I never saw stacks of 100+ units before this patch, but it seems common now.

 

[God]

I would nuke them if possible. Once in my game India put a stack of many units totalling about 80 or so. Even though they were 2 squares away from my city, I nuked them. They lost almost all the offensive power they had. I had pollution around that city but i got that fixed up, no problem. BTW it was with v.1.17f

To beat the big stack build tons of bombers or artillery and harass the stack and knock off one or two guys. I'm sure the AI has left some of its cities undefended. Find their source of rubber and take it out, and after the stack is really weakened send your cavalry deep in their territory to find those unguarded cities. Raze or keep.

I haven't played a game into Industrial times with v.1.21 so I haven't seen this happen.

 

[dowski]

Thanks for the info...and sorry about the dupe thread...I noticed the other after I posted this.

I sure wish I had a nuke! I am just going to attempt to take some other cities and see if I can divert them long enough to where they lose out economically and socially. I got the rest of the world (4 other civs) to declare war on them, they don't have rubber, and don't know Motorized Transportation.

Also, they are a Democracy and they started the conflict, so hopefully their people will start going nuts soon. Maybe they will run out of cash too (the AI is always poor on Warlord level it seems).

My culture is about 2-3 times theirs so hopefully I won't have to deal with flips too much. It is hard to decide whether to gamble and leave units in the cities to defend against "the stack" or to leave them out and avoid the flip. I am going to try to stick it out in the city...at least maybe I'll take some of them with me

-dowski